Keisha @ 4 Months

Today Keisha is 4 months old. I can't believe how fast the time has gone.  Everyday it seems like she does something new. She loves to smile, at first it was just me and adam, now she is getting use to her siblings so she will smile at them when she decides they are playing nice enough with her. She also has lately discovered her tongue, her dad has taught her how to stick it out at people.  As you can tell she has discovered her fingers and her fists and thinks there her new chew toy. Every once in awhile she gets her fingers to far in and gags herself. She has learned her hands actually holds objects and loves to hold her little rattle and make it shake. 

She has learned to laugh when you tickle her just right. Her daddy hates it when she sleeps in our bed with us, she hits him for most of the time. She loves her bath time and kicks and splashes for as long as we leave her in there, she is even a good sport when charlie decides he wants to bath with her to.  She loves to sit her bumbo chair and be part of the family.  She can roll onto her stomach and prefers most naps and nights to sleep that way.  She now resides her big crib because she could almost rock the bassinet over. She sleeps 6-8 hrs depending on the night. She tried cereal for the first time the other day and was not a big fan. She is liking swimming a lot more now that the days have gotten hotter. Though i still take her out every 5 mins to warm up a bit.

We haven't taken her to the doctors yet so we don't have any new current stats. but according to our scale her at home she is about 16 LBS.  She has been drooling like crazy for the past couple months so we keep expecting a tooth to pop in but so far none yet.  Other than that she is a very active baby just like her siblings! 

The Fourth

This year for the fourth we went and watched fireworks on a hill near our ward building since one of the local casinos puts on a pretty big show. We didn't want to get too close since fireworks didn't go over too well last year and the area where the fireworks were only had one entrance and exit, so we weren't going to sit in traffic for an hour to make a 10 mile drive. 

  The kids really enjoyed watching, even though it was from a distance. We even got commentary from them on the sounds the fireworks made and how great they were. If we're still in the area next year we may actually try to get right under the show. The part the kids probably enjoyed most though was getting to stay up later than usually and the treats they were bribed with to stay in their seats so they wouldn't fall down the side of the hill we were on.

Little Mikey/Dismemberment

Last week Ashley was working on a project, and she's really great about letting the kids help out most of the time. While she was at the table finishing up her project, Charles climb up on the table wanting to help. Durning that process he managed to get a hold of Ash's nice sharp sewing scissors. Before she knew it he tried to take the top of his thumb off. I was still on rotations at this time, so I get a message that he's cut his thumb and she can't get it to stop bleeding. I told her to just put some pressure on it and I'd be home in about 30 min. When I got home it was still bleeding, but what it would do is stop bleeding while pressure was being applied and as soon as you took the pressure off it'd start up again.

Needless to say Charles was a little traumatized by the whole situation and was so exhausted that he just wanted to go to sleep when I got home. I took over putting the pressure on it and finally got it to seal up well enough that we could put some liquid band-aide and a regular band-aide on it, after about another 30 min.

Not even 5 min after getting everything bandaged up Charles pulled everything off and it started bleeding again, so we were back to square one. We went through this process about three time of getting it to stop bleeding so we could get it wrapped up again (sometimes while wrapping it up it'd started bleeding so we'd have to stop and put pressure on it) and him pulling bandages off. After he pulled the bandage off a second time we taped a sock over his hand so he couldn't get to his bandage; so what does he do, he goes in the bathroom to play with his toys that grow in the water and gets his sock all wet (back to square one).We finally got control of everything by 10pm (and this all started about 5:30pm) by wrapping up his finger and then taping a sock over his hand and then taping his hand to his side. As you can see from the picture he did manage to get a little blood on himself (this was after cleaning up what was on his face, arms and legs). He didn't mind at all having his arm taped to his side, as was content as could be sleeping that way.

The cut was pretty long, but wasn't very deep and bled like no other (this picture was the day after he cut it).

The next day you would've thought the rough evening and have one less arm to use would've slowed him down, but not this kid. He was running around like he'd been born with one arm, and was running around like normal. He was even climbing things that we would've thought he would need to arms to do. If worse came to worse while climbing he'd get to a point where he'd just flop onto the next surface since he couldn't use his arm (like from hoping from his chair to the table).

After he managed to get the second sock wet the next day, even with it taped to his side, Ash decided to put a glove on (which had all the fingers cut off but the thumb) since he was still pulling band-aides off when it wasn't covered. The only problem with this is his little thumb would slip out of the hole and come out one of the finger holes, so we had to put a full glove on.

I called him little Mikey while he ran around with the glove on (we didn't put any sequins on it).

He even did a little performing for the camera. We can officially say that this little traumatic experience didn't and won't ever result in any form of plastic surgery being performed on his thumb or anywhere else to make him a "real boy".

He ran around with that for two days before we decided it was healed enough that it didn't really matter if he had a band-aide on or not since he pulled them off most of the time. We also tried super glueing it shut after we bought some thinking that would keep it closed, but he just chewed the super glue off. Now its just healing out in the open and he doesn't complain about it, so we just let him do his own thing.

After a week his thumb has healed nicely!

By Adahleigh Photography

As mentioned in previous posts, Adahleigh loves to take pictures all the time. She'll sneak the digital camera when no one is watching and go around the house taking pictures. She also like to use cell phone cameras. What's amazing is she has figured out all on her own how to turn the cameras on and take pictures. She even goes to the extent of setting up her subjects whatever they may be. Here are a few sample of her work.

She started out with candles (and a toy) nicely got them arranged in a line, unfortunately her thumb got in the way but that happens.

She made sure she got a few different angle, so the picture turned out just right.

The ones she took with Ashley's phone didn't turn out quite as clearly. She made sure she got Charles at least looking at the camera.

Then you always have to get a candid picture of people when they least expect it.

(This is the only decent one for public consumption)

Most of the pictures she take are a nice surprise when we're looking back through pictures.

Summer (Finally Here)

Since we moved to warmer weather (at least that's what we thought we were doing, but we got quite a few cold spells till now) the kids have really enjoyed more time outside than inside. They are really like a bunch of caged monkeys the longer they are inside. They do really well first thing in the morning finding acceptable indoor activities, but as the day wears on they begin to get restless and literally climb the walls (as seen in previous posts with Charles climbing abilities). Being able to take them outside is a great relief and they love every second of it (if it was up to them they'd never be inside). Since moving we have enjoyed lots of fun outside activities; like hiking around in the desert around our apartment buildings, swimming, playing on playground toys, barbecuing, and running around and just being crazy. The kids have enjoyed our porch here since they have more access and are less likely to get hurt, since there isn't a swamp cooler or barbecue on it.

The kids have enjoyed summer treats on the porch occasionally, whether it be otter pops, ice cream cones, or popsicles it's all the same. Here are some pictures of them when we first got here (before the porch was all cleaned off) lounging in their lawn chairs.

They both are really good at not making a complete mess when they do it.

Charles isn't as clean about the whole experience, but he enjoys it all the same.

Of course, there has to be at least one really goofy picture in the series.

Swimming

The new apartment we moved to has a pool and the kids love it. For the first three weeks we were here Adahleigh asked daily to go swimming (she got hooked on swimming when Miles and Erin came out for the baby blessing and we went swimming at their hotel), but the weather hadn't warmed up yet and the pool was still closed. Since the pool has opened we've gone almost every day.

We picked up some swim vest for Adahleigh and Charles so they could swim somewhat on their own. Adahleigh picked up on the swimming by herself within a couple of days and now goes around the pool making friends with the older kids and swims with them. She'll swim all over the pool. haven't got her to really jump in on her own yet since she can't touch the bottom anywhere but on the stairs and she doesn't like to get water in her face.

Charles just got the hang of his vest this last week, part of it might be he gets a little cold to quickly and stops kicking. With it warming up a lot this last week he has done better. He can kinda swim from one point to another, but his favorite thing to do is just run around the pool and throw toys in. He does enjoy playing the the hot tub a little better than the pool and the nice thing is it isn't extremely hot so the kids can spend some time in it.

We just started putting Keisha in this last week and she seemed to really enjoy it. She floated around for a good half an hour before we took her out and the only time she cried was when we put her in chest deep. Once we put her in the infant tube she was content as ever.

These are some pictures of their first day swimming they did really well on listening and following directions. I'd tell them to kick and they'd kick their little hearts out to try and get somewhere. They are also really good about not panicking and holding their breath if their face goes underwater, so they haven't choked too much or drank a lot of pool water on accident (Charles how ever keeps trying to get a drink out of the pool or off the cement).

They really enjoy sitting on the cement to warm up with their towels after a nice long swim.
The best thing about the pool is it really wears the kids out, now they are begging to go to bed early and we are even getting a couple of naps in for Adahleigh during the week which is basically unheard of (for about the last year she would only take a nap once ever two weeks if we were lucky). Amazingly, we've managed to keep the kids from getting sunburnt at all, and that was after spending up to three hours in the pool. It probably helps that we don't go swimming until the evening once I get home from my rotations. Ashley isn't too keen on trying to keep track of three kids at the pool by herself, but there seems to be enough time in the evening for the kids to really enjoy themselves.

Baby Keisha 3 Months!

Little Miss Keisha is already three months old. She has been growing so much everyday in every way possible. She has gotten a lot bigger it seems like, she may even be bigger than Adahleigh was at her age (since Charles so far seems to be the runt). Her personality is definitely coming through lately, through the smiling and cooing that she is doing lately (you can also see fear in her eyes when Charles squeals at her right before trying to tickle her) . She loves attention and receives more than enough attention from her siblings (both positive and negative attention of course, since we don't want anyone to be spoiled around here).

Here are a few of her latest and greatests....

*She has been smiling for a couple weeks now

(Adahleigh is the photographer for the next couple pictures! She takes pictures every chance she gets and knows how to turn on the camera, whether it's the digital or a phone)

We were able to catch a brief glimmer of the chatting she does, but at times she can go on for hours, especially if someone is making noises or faces back at her.

Here are several different photos that show how much she has changed in the last three months. They start the day she was born and the last one was taken a week ago.

We don't have an recent measurement on her yet, since we haven't gotten a new Dr for the kids since we moved.